The Coin and the Dome Light - Two Happy Stories from Taiwan

Over the past couple of years I have typically written longer/heavier posts and have several drafts of that sort which may eventually see the light of publishment. But on this warm Spring evening after a very long posting hiatus, I'm writing about a couple of incidents recently which reminded me how life is more pleasant when we look out for each other.

A high speed train rolling into sunny Hsinchu

The Necessary Coin

The first incident took place after a long day of productive meetings, a few weeks ago as I write this. Our baby isn't the worst sleeper I've heard of, but by somewhere around one month my wife and I had been experiencing all sorts of different flavors of sleep-deprivation, which added a bit of spice to my responsibility of chairing this particular meeting for the first time and also taking all the minutes. The trip up to the big city had been smooth, and I'd arrived at the high speed rail station in time to snag a Japanese-style pork and shredded cabbage sandwich to eat on the train along with a cup of coffee. 

All the meetings went well, but after a sequence of "traveling to the capital-morning meeting-lunch meeting-afternoon meeting" I was tired in that late afternoon way, and looking forward to heading home. The train back down the coast was peaceful and sunny, and I could let my thoughts wander for a bit. After arriving at the high speed rail station north of our city and taking a few pictures outside in the good light, I needed to retrieve my car from the big north lot by the station's local railway link. Some parking lots here are automated with cameras, others give you parking tokens, but either way it's typically a smooth process, except for one particular cursed parking garage which I may share about in a future post someday. 

As I neared the payment kiosk for this particular lot--located under loftily elevated tracks so that occasionally a high speed train thundered far overhead on its way up or down the coast--I noticed a long queue of people. Never a good sign. Of the twin machines inside the kiosk, only one was functioning, and I took up my position in line beside the other. The line moved quickly, but as we waited a young man mostly dressed in black behind me said something loudly. After removing my headphones to make sure he wasn't addressing me, I realized he had a bluetooth phone and was talking to someone on the other end while staring into space in my direction, a thing which happens less frequently here than in the U.S.

Then it was my turn to pay, and to my consternation the ample pocket of change I was carrying turned out to be a little too exactly right; I was down to 5 'pennies' (Small copper-colored coins worth 1 NT, short for New Taiwan Dollar, about 3.6 cents apiece in U.S. currency). This was precisely the right amount remaining to pay, but the machine only took 5NT coins or larger. After verifying I had no more coins in my backpack, I had two options; hike to the car on the other side of the parking lot and back while everyone else waited for me, or see if anyone would swap me 5 "pennies" for a "nickel." 

I turned around to face the line that was slowly but inevitably lengthening behind me, and noticed to my surprise that the man in black was already holding out a 5NT coin in his hand. He must have seen the balance on the screen as I was digging around in my backpack. However he couldn't see that I had found the five smaller coins, and thus was simply going to offer me the 5NT so that I could pay and the line could move on. 

I thanked him repeatedly in Mandarin and dumped the five 1 NT coins into his hand as I took the 5 NT coin, and his face showed surprise as he counted the coins, not expecting for the gift to suddenly be a trade. Not everyone would have done that, but Taiwan is the sort of place where it can happen.

A corner fruit market, on an evening of much-needed rain

The Observant Guard

That previous incident came at the beginning of a long busy stretch, which has really more or less continued until the time of this writing. One day earlier this week, I found myself down in our community's underground parking garage. It has room for maybe 80-100 cars, and in one complicatedly-musty-smelling corner are the recycling pails for sorting out the various kinds of plastics, glass, paper, etc. In a more straightforwardly-foul-smelling room, foulness depending on the day of the week, are the big garbage bins and smaller set of "kitchen scrap" tubs which ostensibly get collected and converted into hog feed for pig farmers. 

I was down there on this occasion neither to carry small, pungent bags of things like papaya peelings, onion skins, and egg shells to the scrap tubs, nor large, translucent-pink plastic sacks jostling with fish bones, old face masks, seaweed-almond snack wrappers and way too many baby diapers to the garbage bins, nor even oil-stained, stiff paper lunch takeout boxes, rinsed-out yogurt tubs, gingerly clinking glass oil and soy sauce jars, or humble styrofoam fruit nets to their appropriate recycling pails, but because I was looking around in my car for a printed-out insurance bill. I felt I had already paid it, but wanted to make sure before the end of the month. Having searched the car to no avail, and my sleep-deprived brain filled with other hypothetical places it could be, I accidentally left the dome light on as I left. 

Fast forward to a blessedly rainy evening the next day. I pronounce it blessed because we are in a very serious drought in Taiwan, as all the typhoons missed us last year, and the big reservoirs thus didn't get filled with the vast flood of rainwater those storms drop over Taiwan each summer as they crash into its high mountain ranges and begin to break up. Even all the rain on that day across the big island only served to get back 1 day of national water needs, but with Taiwan's second largest city already cutting water off for 2 days every week, a day's worth of water was very welcome.

I have a habit of reading to my wife and baby before we sleep, which we did through the pregnancy as well, something we credit for the baby seeming to instantly recognize my voice once she was born.  Having worked our way through literary continents like the entire LotR trilogy, we are currently reading the very innocuous Willows in Winter, a heartfelt, many-decades-later sequel to the Wind in the Willows. As I elaborated on the regress of Mr. Toad into the self-aggrandizing schemes he had seemed to renounce at the end of Wind of the Willows and our daughter drifted into a comfortable, milk-drunk daze, I suddenly got a message on my phone and also received a phone call. The message was my landlord telling me the building guard had noticed the vehicle in his unit's parking spot (my car) had an inside light on and contacted him, and the call was from the apartment community front desk, phoning me to make sure I knew to go turn it off. (They had my number because they needed it for my car tag registration for the community lot)

The light had been on for more than 24 hours by that point; I hadn't been back to the car since then as some of my work is done online from home and most errands can be accomplished by walking, the more so as public parking spots are a pain to find. I was grateful, however, to find the light only a little dimmer than before, and the car started right up. After driving a short circuit around our community area just in case, I picked up some cashews and a pork floss* pastry on the way back and returned to our apartment through the night rain, which had by now diminished to a mist. Please pray we'll get more soon.

(*- Pork floss is finely-shredded pork which looks almost exactly like the wood shavings you dump out of an old-fashioned pencil sharpener, and on my first visit to Taiwan I pronounced it based on the appearance and taste to be exactly that, but it's grown on me in the years since, as have many things here.) 

Life and ministry in Taiwan, while sometimes tiring and stressful for reasons beyond our control, is always interesting and often inspiring. I hope these two brief anecdotes give a glimpse into our day-to-day life in which we encounter God's blessings in many small ways. Taiwan is a good place to live, and if traveling had not become a complicated proposition in these troubled days, I would encourage all of you to visit soon. I hope you may yet do so in the future.

Taiwan Life: Two Stories

Life in Taiwan is not always full of excitement once you are used to living here (ministry can easily fall into routines, and comfort zones have to be even more actively avoided overseas where it's so easy to retreat to them), but interesting things do happen on a regular basis. Here are two stories from a couple of years ago, which illustrate the kinds of situations I often find myself in.

Story #1: McDonalds Atheist

McDonalds in Taiwan: Typically faster and a bit cleaner than a McDonalds in the States,
and with different food options, though not as nice as the renovated/re-styled ones.
(This particular McDonalds is the least nice one around here, I don't go to them very often these days)

Spring in Taiwan seems to bring insomnia to many. Winter can be rainy and humid, but the air doesn't have the heavy, supersaturated feeling that makes the days oppressive and the nights restless for those more sensitive to atmospheric changes. A couple of years ago I went through a period of insomnia around this time, and with the stress of some unexpected challenges I was dealing with at that time, often went out for a night walk to decompress.

There is a day market near where I used to live in this neighborhood, near an open grey/waste water canal. The mix of the tainted smell of waste water and fresh meat/organs on sale can be oppressive when there is no breeze to move the air, but the market is colorful, the atmosphere is relaxed but energetic, and the mostly car-free street provides an area for families to relax and children to play (you don't see kids freely playing outside here much except at parks with play areas). The area feels comparatively bustling for this wider community, which empties out during the day as people go off to work and school, or to lock down a place to sit somewhere with air-conditioning.

The market consists of fruit and vegetable stalls (and early in the day, fresh cuts of meat and organs) and temporary stands under umbrellas strung down the road which runs alongside the waste-water drainage canal. Continuing for a couple of minutes, the street becomes a covered thoroughfare under an assortment of metal and plastic roofing sheets, with a maze of stalls constructed from old or scrap wood. This is the covered portion of the traditional market, and while fish and some other things are sold inside, there are also various dry goods and small items. It's smaller than a real Chinese nightmarket and less lively and with less variety than a Middle Eastern souk, but seems to have been there for longer than the building around it have stood. (Some Taiwanese friends I have shown around our community expressed surprise that Taipei still has this kind of area; it's a holdout from an earlier era of the city)

At night, the temporary stands along the road are either left there or wheeled into little niches, and the covered area of the market becomes a dark and silent maze of a few alleys, full of the musty smell of old wood and dust that got very hot during the day and are now cooling off. I call it the haunted market for fun, as it does have that vibe at night, though the only ghosts I've seen are cats sneaking stealthily through the roofs and rafters, hunting large rats, and sometimes creepily staring down at you silently with eyes reflecting whatever light may or may not be present.

One late evening, as most of the city had gone to bed, I restlessly made my way down to a McDonalds I knew would still be open. The quickest way was through the "haunted market." I know those streets well, and emerging from a narrow opening onto the main road, my destination was directly ahead. The weight of my introversion was upon me, and I didn't want any social engagements, just to eat something satisfyingly unhealthy and read on my phone for a while. (Yes, missionaries have those times too)

As I sat reading and listening to music, a conversation beside me began to filter through. My Chinese had just reached a level where it was possible to "overhear" things people were saying, versus needing to actively focus and listen to catch anything. I heard certain Christianese phrases which indicated the people talking were Christians, and began to feel like I needed to at least say hello to them.

I turned and politely asked what church they were from. They were very surprised that a white foreigner had randomly done this, and I explained that I was a Christian who had moved to Taiwan to help the Taiwanese church. (I sometimes don't use the term 'missionary' as it's ambiguous and people don't ever inquire further) They were happy to hear it and invited me to join their conversation. They were speaking with a guy who had come to their church for a while and counted as part of their social group but who wasn't a believer, and was actually an atheist; skeptical that God existed at all. They asked if I could help them convince him that God was real.

It's rare in Taiwan to not believe in the supernatural or the divine. The significant majority of Taiwanese view the existence of an unseen, supernatural world as a matter of course; in Taiwan you are never living far from it, and many people's lives are entangled with it. (One need only visit some of the creepier temples to be well aware of it.) To deny it would be rather like stubbornly disbelieving the existence of unseen information being passed around in the air via wifi because you can't see or feel it.

I know some excellent arguments for the existence of God, solid enough that only those skilled and having experience in this area of debate would know how to talk their way out of them. However, this approach is all but useless in Taiwan, because religion is not a matter of logic here. People frequently follow multiple, mutually-exclusive belief systems simultaneously. This is not paradoxical for them because it is not considered reasonable for humans to presume to know which of the countless explanations of the divine are true, if that even means anything; for the majority of Taiwanese, a human's job is merely to be respectful and sincere in our approach to "the divine," and not disrespect anyone by saying their particular understanding is wrong, unless it leads to obviously bad behavior and societal disharmony. (or polluting the environment; mass burning of paper money on important lunar days has been targeted lately as contributing to the bad air quality here)

So although I recall mentioning perhaps one or two of these, I didn't dwell on them. My Chinese was also not quite up to explaining how the point of maximum potential energy in the universe could neither have eternally existed nor could an eternal universe gradually gotten there; something must have triggered it and/or supplied the energy itself.

Instead the very present circumstances suggested the most powerful approach: I informed the man that God had sent me, a foreign Christian, from the other side of the world, to Taiwan, to this McDonalds at midnight where I just happened to overhear their conversation, to tell him that God was indeed real. His eyes widened a bit at that, but I pressed the point home. What are the chances of this conversation even happening? His friends were excited. "It's an angel!" they said, not meaning a ministering spirit from heaven but in the sense Taiwanese Christians use, that person you need, sent by God at the right moment.  The guy dithered a little, saying he wanted God to give him some kind of evidence. I waved my hand. "Hello, I am your evidence. I'm hear from several thousand miles away in this McDonalds at midnight, sent by God to tell you that He is real." He looked scared. (As is nearly always the case, the problem wasn't lack of evidence; the problem was that he didn't want to believe.)

We talked for a while after that, and eventually it got very late and we all needed to head home. A few months later I moved to the other side of the neighborhood (and stopped eating junk food at midnight) and very rarely went to that McDonalds, and I didn't see that group of people again. But certainly God arranged that meeting. I hope the man took it to heart. In the midst of a challenging time in my adjustment process here, it was certainly encouraging to me.

Story #2: Accidentally Stumping the TCM Doctor

A packet of Chinese medicine, herbal powder to mix with water and drink.

Not long after that, I came down with a pretty bad flu. It took me nearly a week to get past it, yet while my body stopped aching and I could function again, I didn't really feel "better." I mentioned this to one of the men who attended my English class at the community center. "I'm going to see the Chinese medicine doctor in a couple of days," he said, "do you want to come?" I had not tried Chinese medicine yet, but I was willing to give it a shot.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is focused less on curing your illness or suppressing your symptoms and more on figuring out why you're getting sick in the first place, and fixing that. If you don't want to invest time and effort into becoming more healthy, you just want a pill to make you feel better, then Chinese medicine is not for you. Even in Taiwan many people are skeptical of it (you can take expensive herbal supplements and avoid certain foods for a long time and not notice any real change), but many people have experienced its effectiveness for certain problems. (Even in the West, acupuncture has made a name for itself by resolving certain problems in an almost magical way. It seems there are signal paths in the body that ought to be the focus of more research) Since Chinese medicine usually has less impact on the body than western medicine (even if various methods for increasing blood circulation to the surface of the skin look intimidating), people often view it as a better first resort, feeling that popping pills will damage their liver and possibly other things and that more natural methods put less strain on the body and encourage it to heal.

Knowing this, I was more interested to go for the experience than from necessarily thinking I was going to feel better quickly. Meeting the man early in the morning (there would be a line out the door, he explained), we walked across the neighborhood to where the clinic was located. As he predicted, even before the metal outer door was rolled up, there were a few elderly people waiting around outside. We decided to grab breakfast first, and by the time we returned, the doctor was seeing patients. My friend taking me to the clinic was a Buddhist (in a more strict sense than most people in Taiwan; he didn't believe in Chinese folk religion, and only followed Buddha, though he wasn't strict enough to be a vegetarian), and as we waited we began discussing religion.

He explained that a saying of Buddha compared religion to a river that various boats could get you across. We found that a difference in the teaching of Jesus and Buddha lay in their attitude toward their own teaching: "Heaven and Earth shall pass away but My words shall not pass away," said Jesus. But the man said that Buddha had predicted there would come a point when no one remembered the way or his teachings. (Anyone reading this who can confirm or refute that is welcome to comment, I couldn't find the reference myself)

Using another analogy, my friend insisted all religions, if not equally helpful, were at least equally valid. "Like us here," he explained. "We're all here to see the doctor, and we all want to be healthy. But the medicine he gives each of us might be different." I nodded. "We are, but using that analogy, we would need to make sure our definition of "healthy" is the same." At that moment, an assistant announced it was our turn to see the doctor. As we walked in, the man addressed the doctor breezily. "Doctor," he said, "we were just having a conversation you might be able to help us with." The doctor turned inquiringly. "What is the definition of health?" my friend asked.

The doctor's eyebrows went up, then he paused with a brief look of panic. One could almost hear him thinking "Oh no, I am supposed to have a good answer for this." He blinked. "Uh, let's... let's see what's wrong with you first." We acquiesced, and my friend continued. "Yes, perhaps health is as simple as the absence of sickness." I disagreed that it could be defined in purely negative terms. As the doctor examined us by carefully feeling our pulse at the wrist, however, he recovered his presence of mind and ended up giving a decently good definition of health by the end.

After taking my pulse he explained gravely that the instability he could feel in my pulse demonstrated that my body had too much "heat" (in Chinese medical theory it doesn't mean your body temperature is too high in a way that would show up on a thermometer), and was also too "humid." He gave me some medicine for my persistent lingering symptoms from the flu, and said as long as I had the excessive heat-humidity condition then summer in Taiwan would be feel even more hot and uncomfortable than usual, but to fix it would take some herbal therapy and dietary adjustments over the long term.

Leaving, we got our medicine in little packets, and I got a page listing all the foods I should avoid that would aggravate the heat-humidity condition. Noticing that it was pretty much everything I enjoyed eating. (from chocolate to curry to mangoes to coffee), I immediately resolved that it was entirely possible my diet was causing this problem, and that I was also not at all willing to correct it.

I would, however, take my medicine. I am used to taking a certain kind of fiber supplement that tastes like tree bark, so the slightly medicinal and bitter taste of the Chinese medicine powder was not a problem. My Taiwanese coworker was one of those people skeptical about Chinese medicine, and expected I wouldn't notice much of anything. However, the medicine had an unexpected effect on me. The packets didn't say what herbs or other ingredients had been mixed together into the powder, but after taking the first one I decided one ingredient must be guarana or powdered caffeine. Not only did my cold symptoms flee, but I found myself humming with energy and unable to sit down. I hadn't expected this at all, but took advantage of the burst of energy to straighten up my apartment.

After that I took a few of the remaining packets as instructed, but slowed down and used the rest as pick me ups for when I was feeling sluggish (easy to happen during Taiwan's rainy spring season, especially during bad allergy days). I still don't know what was in there, but it worked better than any energy drink I've tried.

So that's two pretty normal stories of life here. Want to hear more, or learn more about certain aspects of life here? Leave a comment and let me know!

That Time I Almost Fought a Hobo: 3 Stories from Taiwan

Doing ministry in Asia, one encounters all kinds of interesting situations; interesting both because the cultural context is not one's home culture, and because one's reason for living in that culture involves not just trying to make oneself as comfortable as possible "despite" the unfamiliarity, but immerse oneself in it to understand it better. That immersion leads to lots of interesting situations, which are not always pleasant at the time, but those always make the best stories later...

Today I'm sharing three random stories of life in Taiwan.

1. Southern Hospitality

Last summer I was down in Kaohsiung visiting some American friends, and they decided to take me to a certain beach near a university. (The night before we'd climbed a mountain with dozens of monkeys surrounding us as darkness fell and took pictures of Kaohsiung's nighttime cityscape from the Martyr's Shrine, but that's a story for another time) We took a short cut which ended in a locked metal gate, with various warnings about not going that way, but also a very obvious wallowed out spot under the door where everyone had been going underneath it. We hesitated, not wanting to trespass, and asked a Taiwanese man on his scooter whether there was another way. He looked at us kind of funny and said we should just go under the door. Going by his seeming confusion that we would be considering other options, we decided it was established practice enough that we could "do as the Romans." So, we did, and I was happy I'd lost a good bit of weight since getting to Taiwan, as it was not much more than literally a human-sized gap, and not an especially large human.

Once we were through we quickly descended to a nice beach, which was "maintained" by the people who used it. They regularly picked up trash, and had constructed a little walkway down to the beach (from the main road, if you were coming from the opposite direction we had been) made only of driftwood and scraps, which led down from a path that led through some woods and then dense hillside foliage.
There was also an artificial basin that held water from a spring, clear and cold, which wasn't for drinking but could be used to wash the sand and saltwater off. People had also constructed a changing booth and a couple of beachside huts, again from mostly scrap materials, wire, and some boards and bamboo poles, sheltered from the wind behind large boulders/rocky outcroppings. (It was well and efficiently designed; as an engineer by trade, I approved.)

I don't have many pics from the beach, but here's one showing the scrap-constructed walkway

While at the beach we met a Haitian student who'd been studying in Taiwan for a while and seemed to find solace in the beach from her loneliness and culture shock in general. There was also a random streaking incident by a young lady we were told was mentally confused  ("Whelp, guess we'll have to go find her again," said the older lady who'd brought her). There was a pack of dogs roaming around too, but they were not quite wild, more like beach community dogs, who would bark a little but just to make sure you knew it was their beach that you were borrowing and didn't bother you otherwise, but appeared to be greatly enjoying themselves in general.
It was an interesting day all around.

As we were enjoying the ocean (though siltier than usual), we bumped into some students from the Taipei police academy. After chatting with them for a while, they invited us back to a small gathering which had convened in one of the beachside huts. It seemed to be a family and some friends, and they kindly offered us a spot to sit and cold drinks they'd ordered a lot of, not even thinking of accepting payment. Though they spoke on English at all, it seemed perfectly natural for them to have a few foreigners drop by and chat, eat some snacks, and then wander off. (Southern Taiwan especially is like this, I am told) The hut was constructed so that the breeze could easily blow through, yet it was sturdy enough to apparently withstand typhoons (or had been repaired since the last one). We chatted until more people came and we felt we should let them have our seats, then thanked them and took our leave. It was a friendly and laid-back sort of encounter I rarely have up in the hurried north, though sometimes one merely has to get out of the city to find them.

2. Attack of the Belligerent Hobo

Over a year ago now we had our Winter VBS for the community kids. The community center where we held the VBS has an outside courtyard and little park alongside it, a great place for a VBS in our area where community centers are usually small and cramped or share a building with other occupants/businesses.
Having decided to take advantage of some good weather and this outside area, we let the kids go on a scavenger hunt, with a list of things they needed to take pictures of using their cellphones.

Where it all went down..

A couple days previous, a hobo had claimed a spot on the perimeter of the courtyard area. I call him a hobo because that's seemingly what he was; an older man with unkempt hair and beard in old but not filthy clothes, seemingly well-fed and not on drugs, but who was obviously homeless and carried his things around on a large cart. In the US someone noticing a hobo hanging out by a park where kids play would probably fear for their children and call the police, but in Taiwan the police won't come if he hasn't done anything specifically wrong yet (which I think is fair, being homeless doesn't make you a bad person), and also by the time they get there he's easily able to wander off, as he did on at least one occasion when the police did eventually show up to check things out.

They did show up in this case, later on, because he was what I'd call a belligerent sort of hobo. He seemed somewhat bitter, acted like having parked his cart there meant he owned the place, and had no qualms about angrily lecturing those using the playground equipment if he felt they were doing so improperly. He yelled at kids and made them cry for using equipment which was really for adults to exercise on, and when the mom asked him to stop since he was scaring her child, he scoffingly explained the reason the child was crying was not his warning but her own poor parenting.

So as the kids are going on their scavenger hunt, they are mostly skirting the old man but aren't necessarily afraid of him. But one of the items on their list was "dog" and since the old man had two dogs with him, they skipped over and took a picture of one.

"Raaaargh!" -instantly the man jumped up yelling angrily, and began wrestling the camera from the child. I couldn't understand what he was shouting at the kid in Mandarin at first, but as I physically interposed myself between him and the kids, I heard him saying "delete it! delete it!" As best I could make out, he considered the dogs his own property and not a public display, and was offended that the kids felt they could take a picture without asking. Furthermore, he informed me as he calmed down (slightly), after I showed him that I had deleted the pictures in question, he didn't think a foreigner should be teaching Taiwanese kids anyway, as this was "educational failure" according to him. (This was a really great incident to occur right during the most difficult portion of my culture shock adjustment, let me tell you..)

Fortunately (and interestingly) the kids were only briefly startled and not terrified, perhaps since many of them were neighborhood kids and familiar with odd customers coming and going and grumpy old men in general. So "I don't like him"/"He's weird"/"What's his problem" was the consensus, versus the reaction I can only imagine a lot of American little kids would have had in that kind of confrontation, of stark terror. I was probably more shaken up by it than they were, as having to use my limited Chinese to half take, half talk the camera away from him was also a rather stressful language test (Hey, Mandarin pop quiz! Violent-crazy or just crazy?), and at the beginning I was beginning to physically intervene as I thought he might hurt the kids. (And though I was willing to drop him if necessary to protect the kids, being seen as "the foreigner who beat up that old guy" would be a terrible way to start out in this very aggression-averse culture. The really tough cultural hurdles are those when local moral sensibilities like "there is almost literally nothing more shameful than ruffianism like fighting publicly" collide with my upbringing of "if you had to fight someone off to save a child, you did a praiseworthy thing." In a pinch, I'd have to stick to my principles and take the consequences whether I was understood or not. So I'm glad in this case it turned out not to be necessary.)

Interestingly, the nearby moms (of other children in the park, not our VBS kids) stood by awkwardly during this incident and seemed not angry or indignant at the man so much as relieved the publicly embarrassing situation was resolved peacefully. (I'm guessing part of that really was embarrassment on their part, due to the fact that I was a foreigner and that was not a good face of Taiwan to be showing me) The man remained there for another day or two, with more angry lectures (we have a great word for this in English: "haranguing") but no more confrontational outbursts, until people finally asked the police to come, as they'd begun to threaten him to do if he didn't stop yelling at their kids. (He disappeared before the officers showed up, leaving his stuff, then disappeared altogether later) Massive cultural learning experience all the way around. But once is enough!

3. Chinese Mafia Noodle Soup

In the wider community where I live, there are a number of small restaurants, but fewer than in many parts of the metro area. So I was happy to discover, about seven minutes' walk from my home, a beef noodle soup restaurant. These are common in Taiwan, and beef noodle soup is a Taipei specialty, with nearly infinite variations on a few basic types. This place was run by an older gentleman, who looked to be well past potential retirement age.

He greeted me politely and after I ordered, suggested I try the tomato beef noodle soup next time, because "you foreigners all like that kind." (He was being friendly, and I wasn't offended. Nor would it have mattered if I was offended. Some people these days need to take the rhetoric down a notch.) He knew this was true, he explained, because HTC (the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer) main HQ is within eyeshot of the restaurant, and there a good number of westerners coming through on business trips who always liked the kind with tomatoes.

I said I might try it the next time (I still haven't, come to think of it, the kind I ordered was so good I get that every time), and enjoyed my meal immensely.

Now, there is a certain table in the back that's the sort of place and angle where I like to sit in restaurants, and I always try to sit there. I haven't yet succeeded, because the owner moves me every time. "No no, that table is too small, please sit over here, it's much better, you can see the TV," etc. Sometimes he doesn't even offer a reason, just apologetically moves me. In all the times I've gone, I've never seen anyone sit at that table, regardless of how many people are there.

Also, as I left that first time, and all the times since then, I've noticed the cook is a man of about the same age as the owner... with arms covered in triad-style (Chinese mafia) sleeve tattoos. I should note that tattoos (at least obvious noticeable ones) are still somewhat culturally taboo in Taiwan, partially due to gang associations. So when you someone in Taiwan of his age with the sleeve tattoos like that, it's more or less a dead giveaway.

 I also noticed that the cook and the owner seemed to be friends more so than boss/employee. So now I'm pretty sure I know what happened...
A mafia higher-up had a dream: He was getting too old for this nonsense, and one day soon, he would quit this life of crime, and open a nice little noodle shop. One of his mafia brothers joined him, and together they retired and settled down in a suburb of Taipei City to make amazing beef noodle soup.

One cannot simply leave the mafia, however, and there is necessarily a certain level of 'business' that still goes on. Those wishing to partake in it signal that... by sitting at a certain table in the back of the restaurant. I wonder if there's a certain dish you have to order. ("I'd like the beef noodle soup with the very special spice.") Like I said, I've never seen anyone sitting at that table, even with the restaurant busy, so maybe one day I'll have the chance to find out...

One reason it's an awesome place: So much meat! Some places only give you slivers

Hope you enjoyed these little anecdotes... Though most days aren't full of crazy situations, it's still true that when you walk out your door here, you never know exactly what might happen by the time you get back...